Ofelia Fernández, a rising star of the Left in Argentina, first appeared in the public eye in 2018. That year, the Chamber of Deputies was holding its first — but not its last — congressional hearing to debate a proposed abortion bill. Only seventeen years old, Fernández had already been active in student politics from the age of twelve, and it showed in her speech delivered before the congressional committee: In a week-long session featuring the country’s leading doctors, religious leaders, psychologists, activists, lawyers, and government officials, her speech was head and shoulders above the rest.

Fernández had been swept up in the “Green Tide” — a new wave of feminist activism named after the green kerchief, symbolizing the fight for the right to free, safe, and legal abortions. A year later, that same surge of feminist militancy turned Fernández, still only nineteen years old, into the youngest legislator in Latin America.

For nearly a year in Argentina the abortion debate was at the top of the public agenda: talks were held in schools, on television, in street gatherings, and virtually anywhere where people gathered. A series of related demands began to swirl around the abortion issue — matters of public health, bodily autonomy, freedom, and collective solidarity were drawn into the debate. Hundreds of thousands of teenagers were also drawn into the national discussion, and were politicized through feminist activism.